Best Souvenir Ever: Take Home the Scent of Northern California

Ever been out hiking in the wilderness, breathed in the air, and wished you could bottle it and take it back with you? Well, now you can. Oakland-based Juniper Ridge literally plucks aromatics from all over the Northern California outdoors, then bottles them on site.

One of the best things about being in Northern California is that fresh, clean, fragrant mountain air—it's so good, you just want to bottle it and take it back home with you. Well, now you can, thanks to the Oakland-based aroma company, Juniper Ridge. The company has plucked aromatics from all across the Northern Californian wilderness—from the mountains, to the coast—and bottled them on site to create fragrances that smell, well, like California. (Basically making their fragrances the best souvenir ever).

Think wild sage fields, spruce-covered forests, and light, Pacific ocean mists. According to fragrance maker Obi Kaufmann, each Juniper Ridge fragrance contains between six and ten plants from within any given terrain. Unsurprisingly, it's a lot of "balancing and tinkering" to create that perfect aromatic snapshot, Kaufmann admits—but they manage to do it.

"All of the wild botanicals we use to create our fragrances have a way of absorbing the local environment to produce these incredibly evocative scents," explained Kaufmann. "When the sea mist rolls in over the central California mountains, the wild sage fields swell with moisture and produce the gooey components we use in our perfume extracts."

Bottling NorCal's Southern Bounty is a long process that often involves long drives and hours of harvesting (they'll sometimes yield near 5,000 pounds of plant material). The staff does most of the work and scent-bottling outdoors, using a portable distillery that's a little, well, traditional.

"To unlock the fragrance from the plants, we use some very old-school perfume-making techniques," admitted Kaufmann. "This includes steam-distillation of essential oils, alcohol tincturing, and direct-oil infusion."

The company's collection of fragrances are a breath of fresh air from many of the head-fogging, synthetic perfumes on the market. Plus, the packaging is beautiful, and so is their pop-up market at San Francisco's Perish Trust boutique. (728 Divisadero St; theperishtrust.com)